The Manifesto of The Socialist League

By William Morris and E. Belfort Bax

Prefatory Note

The spread of Socialism since the first issue of this
Manifesto makes a new edition necessary; all the more, as the word Socialism is
now freely used by Ministers and ex-Ministers, who cannot be expected to understand
it, and who nevertheless take credit to themselves for their audacity in
patronising it before vast popular audiences, so that the word has got to be used
loosely and in a misleading manner.

It is hoped that this new issue may be a corrective against misunderstandings that
may arise from all this.

The Notes appended to this edition will at any rate, we hope, clear up any possible
ambiguities in the text as well as we the undersigned can clear them up.

E. BELFORT BAX. and WILLIAM MORRIS, October, 1885.

The Manifesto of The Socialist League

Fellow Citizens,

We come before you as a body advocating the principles of Revolutionary
International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a
change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.

As the civilised world is at present constituted, there are two classes of Society
- the one possessing wealth and the instruments of its production, the other
producing wealth by means of those instruments but only by the leave and for the
use of the possessing classes.

These two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another. The possessing
class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on the unpaid labour of the
producers - the more unpaid labour they can wring out of them, the richer they will
be; therefore the producing class - the workers - are driven to strive to better
themselves at the expense of the possessing class, and the conflict between the two
is ceaseless. Sometimes it takes the form of open rebellion, sometimes of strikes,
sometimes of mere widespread mendicancy and crime; but it is always going on in one
form or other, though it may not always be obvious to the thoughtless looker-on
(see Note A).

We have spoken of unpaid labour: it is necessary to explain what that means. The
sole possession of the producing class is the power of labour inherent in their
bodies; but since, as we have already said, the richer classes possess all the
instruments of labour, that is, the land, capital, and machinery, the producers or
workers are forced to sell their sole possession, the power of labour, on such
terms as the possessing class will grant them.

These terms are, that after they have produced enough to keep them in working
order, and enable them to beget children to take their places when they are worn
out, the surplus of their products shall belong to the possessors of property,
which bargain is based on the fact that every man working in a civilised community
can produce more than he needs for hisown sustenance (Note B).

This relation of the possessing class to the working class is the essential basis
of the system of producing for a profit, on which our modern Society is founded.
The way in which it works is as follows. The manufacturer produces to sell at a
profit to the broker or factor, who in his turn makes a profit out of his dealings
with the merchant, who again sells for a profit to the retailer, who must make his
profit out of the general public, aided by various degrees of fraud and
adulteration and the ignorance of the value and quality of goods to which this
system has reduced the consumer.

The profit-grinding system is maintained by competition, or veiled war, not only
between the conflicting classes, but also within the classes themselves: there is
always war among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the
employers and middle-men, for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers;
lastly, there is competition always, and sometimes open war, among the nations of
the civilised world for their share of the world-market. For now, indeed, all the
rivalries of nations have been reduced to this one - a degraded struggle for their
share of the spoils of barbarous countries to be used at home for the purpose of
increasing the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor.

For, owing to the fact that goods are made primarily to sell, and only secondarily
for use, labour is wasted on all hands; since the pursuit of profit compels the
manufacturer competing with his fellows to force his wares on the markets by means
of their cheapness, whether there is any real demand for them or not. In the words
of the Communist manifesto of 1847:-

"Cheap goods are the artillery for battering down Chinese walls and for overcoming
the obstinate hatred entertained against foreigners by semi-civilised nations:
under penalty of ruin the Bourgeoisie compel by competition the universal adoption
of their system of production; they force all nations to accept what is called
civilisation - to become Bourgeois - and thus the middle-class shapes the world
after its own image."

Moreover, the whole method of distribution under this system is full of waste; for
it employs whole armies of clerks, travellers, shopmen, advertisers, and what not,
merely for the sake of shifting money from one person's pocket to another's; and
this waste in production and waste in distribution, added to the maintenance of the
useless lives of the possessing and non-producing class, must all be paid for out
of the products of the workers, and is a ceaseless burden on their lives.

Therefore the necessary results of this so-called civilisation are only too obvious
in the lives of its slaves, the working-class - in the anxiety and want of leisure
amidst which they toil, in the squalor and wretchedness of those parts of our great
towns where they dwell; in the degradation of their bodies, their wretched health,
and the shortness of their lives; in the terrible brutality so common among them,
and which is indeed but the reflection of the cynical selfishness found among the
well-to-do classes, a brutality as hideous as the other; and lastly, in the crowd
of criminals who are as much manufactures of our commercial system as the cheap and
nasty wares which are made at once for the consumption and the enslavement of the
poor.

What remedy, then, do we propose for this failure of our civilisation, which is now
admitted by almost all thoughtful people?

We have already shown that the workers, although they produce all the wealth of
society, have no control over its production or distribution: the people,
who are the only really organic part of society, are treated as a mere appendage to
capital - as a part of its machinery. This must be altered from the foundation: the
land, the capital, the machinery, factories, workshops, stores, means of transit,
mines, banking, all means of production and distribution of wealth, must be
declared and treated as the common property of all. Every man will then receive the
full value of his labour, without deduction for the profit of a master, and as all
will have to work, and the waste now incurred by the pursuit of profit will be at
an end, the amount of labour necessary for every individual to perform in order to
carry on the essential work of the world will be reduced to something like two or
three hours daily; so that every one will have abundant leisure for following
intellectual or other pursuits congenial to his nature (Note C).

This change in the method of production and distribution would enable every one to
live decently, and free from the sordid anxieties for daily livelihood which at
present weigh so heavily on the greatest part of mankind (Note D).

But, moreover, men's social and moral relations would be seriously modified by this
gain of economical freedom, and by the collapse of the superstitions, moral and
other, which necessarily accompany a state of economical slavery: the test of duty
would now rest on the fulfilment of clear and well-defined obligations to the
community rather than on the moulding of the individual character and actions to
some preconceived standard outside social responsibilities (Note
E).

Our modern bourgeois property-marriage, maintained as it is by its necessary
complement, universal venal prostitution, would give place to kindly and human
relations between the sexes (Note F).

Education freed from the trammels of commercialism on the one hand and superstition
on the other, would become a reasonable drawing out of men's varied faculties in
order to fit them for a life of social intercourse and happiness; for mere work
would no longer be proposed as the end of life, but happiness for each and all.

Only be such fundamental changes in the life of man, only by the transformation of
Civilisation into Socialism, can those miseries of the world before mentioned be
amended (Note G).

As to mere politics, Absolutism, Constitutionalism, Republicanism, have all been
tried in our day and under our present social system, and all have alike failed in
dealing with the real evils of life.

Nor, on the other hand, will certain incomplete schemes of social reform now before
the public solve the question.

Co-operation so-called - that is, competitive co-operation for profit - would
merely increase the number of small joint-stock capitalists, under the mask of
creating an aristocracy of labour, while it would intensify the severity of labour
by its temptations to overwork (Note H).

Nationalisation of the land alone, which many earnest and sincere persons are now
preaching, would be useless so long as labour was subject to the fleecing of
surplus value inevitable under the Capitalist system (Note I).

No better solution would be that of State Socialism, by whatever name it may be
called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working class while
leaving the present system of capital and wages still in operation: no number of
merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political
power, would make any real approach to Socialism (Note J).

The Socialist League therefore aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary
Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the
help of the workers of all civilisation. For us neither geographical boundaries,
political history, race, nor creed makes rivals or enemies; for us there are no
nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are
checked or perverted by groups of masters and fleecers whose interest it is to stir
up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands.

It is clear that for all these oppressed and cheated masses of workers and their
masters a great change is preparing: the dominant classes are uneasy, anxious,
touched in conscience even, as to the condition of those they govern; the markets
of the world are being competed for with an eagerness never before known;
everything points to the fact that the great commercial system is becoming
unmanageable, and is slipping from the grasp of its present rulers.

The one change possible out of all this is Socialism. As chattel-slavery passed
into serfdom, and serfdom into the so-called free-labour system, so most surely
will this latter pass into social order.

To the realisation of this change the Socialist League addresses itself with all
earnestness. As a means thereto it will do all in its power towards the education
of the people in the principles of this great cause, and will strive to organise
those who will accept this education, so that when the crisis comes, which the
march of events is preparing, there may be a body of men ready to step into their
due places and deal with and direct the irresistible movement.

Close fellowship with each other, and steady purpose for the advancement of the
Cause, will naturally bring about the organisation and discipline amongst ourselves
absolutely necessary to success; but we shall look to it that there shall be no
distinctions of rank or dignity amongst us to give opportunities for the selfish
ambition of leadership which has so often injured the cause of the workers. We are
working for equality and brotherhood for all the world, and it is only
through equality and brotherhood that we can make our work effective.

Let us all strive, then, towards this end of realising the change towards social
order, the only cause worthy the attention of the workers of all that are proffered
to them: let us work in that cause patiently, yet hopefully, and not shrink from
making sacrifices to it. Industry in learning its principles, industry in teaching
them, are most necessary to our progress; but to these we must add, if we wish to
avoid speedy failure, frankness and fraternal trust in each other, and
single-hearted devotion to the religion of Socialism, the only religion which the
Socialist League professes.

Notes on the Manifesto

A. The distribution of wares is as
necessary in a community as their production; the necessary distributors
therefore belong really to the class of the producers, so long as they are
genuinely fulfilling this function, are not over-paid, are spending their earnings
on their own livelihood, and are not living on the interest of invested money; the
same thing may be said of those who follow such professions as medicine and
teaching. It may be added as to the medical men, that the competition which runs
through all life at the present day keeps most of them poor enough - for their
position in the middle-class - some of them not earning more than an average
skilled workman. Such men have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a social
revolution; they, along with the poorer of the literary men, may be said to belong
to the intellectual proletariat; and are slaves to Capital in their way just as the
mechanics are in theirs.

A word or two on those of the working-class, who by dint of the much-praised
"thrift and industry" have raised themselves into the position of small
capitalists, who have, for example, money in savings banks or building-societies.
These "aristocrats of labour" have in fact a double quality, and are both
slave-drivers and slave-driven: living in comparative comfort, yet without
aspirations for a life of true refinement, they offer good material for the schemes
of reactionaries; it is accordingly on the widespread creation of such a sub-class
that the more foreseeing of the dominant classes base their hopes of the
continuance of the present system, with its necessary foundation of mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water.

B. The standard of livelihood varies at
different times and in different countries: it has always been a subject of bitter
contention between employers and employed, sometimes leading to actual war between
them, and continually to strikes and other bickering; but the whole result of this
higgling has always been to leave at least a lowest class of labour
existing only a little above actual starvation. On the other hand no group of the
workers can properly be said to have even a subsistence-wage if their standard
falls below that of the healthy middle-class; they live, it is true, but the
statistics of the average of life in the various classes show that they do not live
as long as the better fed and less worked classes do (if indeed statistics be
necessary to support such an obvious fact). They die before their time.

C. The end which true Socialism sets before
us is the realisation of absolute equality of condition helped by the development
of variety of capacity, according to the motto, from each one according to
his capacity, to each one according to his needs; but it may be necessary,
and probably will be, to go through a transitional period, during which currency
will still be used as a medium of exchange, though of course it will not bear with
it the impress of surplus value. Various suggestions have been made as to the
payment of labour during this period. The community must compel a certain amount of
labour from every person not in nonage, or physically or mentally incapable, such
compulsion being in fact but the compulsion of nature, who gives us nothing for
nothing. 1st. This labour may be arranged on the understanding that each person
does an amount of work calculated on the average that an ordinary healthy person
can turn out in a given time, the standard being the time necessary for the
production of a definite quantity of bread-stuff. It is clear that under this
system, owing to the difference of capacity one man may have to work a longer and
another a shorter time than the estimated average, and thus the result would fall
short of the Communistic ideal of absolute equality; but it is probable that these
differences would not have much practical effect on social life; because the
advantages gained by the better workers could not be transmuted into the power of
compelling unpaid labour from others, since rent, profit, and interest would have
ceased to exist. Those who obtained the extra goods would have to consume them
themselves, otherwise they would be of no use to them. It should also be remembered
that the tendency of modern production is to equalise the capacities of labour by
means of machinery, so that the unskilled, the weak man, the woman, or even the
child, are reduced to something like an equality of capacity. Of course it will be
understood that this is an illustration drawn from our present state of industrial
production, which for this reason employs woman or child-labour in preference to
that of adults.

But 2ndly, labour might be so arranged that an estimated necessary average of time
should be its basis, so that no one would have to work longer than another, and the
community would have to put up with the differences between various capacities, and
the necessary short-comings of some which would be compensated by the superiority
of others. The bourgeois will of course cry out that this would be offering a
premium to idleness and stupidity; but once more we must not forget that the use of
machinery would much reduce the difficulty; and further, that as each would be
encouraged to develop his special capacity; a position of usefulness could be found
for everyone; and this fact would almost entirely get rid of the above difficulty.
Whatever residuum of disadvantages was left would be met by the revolutionised
ethics of a Socialist epoch, which would make all feel their first duty to be the
energetic performance of social functions: shirking work would be felt to be as
much of a disgrace then to an ordinary man as cowardice in the face of an enemy is
now to an officer in the army, and would be avoided accordingly.

Finally, we look forward to the time when any definite exchange will have entirely
ceased to exist; just as it never existed in that primitive Communism which
preceded Civilisation.

The enemy will say, "This is retrogression not progress"; to which we answer, All
progress, every distinctive stage of progress, involves a backward as well as a
forward movement; the new development returns to a point which represents the older
principle elevated to a higher plane; the old principle reappears transformed,
purified, made stronger, and ready to advance on the fuller life it has gained
through its seeming death. As an illustration (imperfect as all illustrations must
be) take the case of advance on a straight line and on a spiral, - the progress of
all life must be not on the straight line, but on the spiral.

D. The freedom from these sordid anxieties
offers the only chance to escape from the insipidity or the bitterness, into one of
which the lives of most men fall at present. Then would real variety and healthy
excitement be introduced into human life. Then would come to an end that "dull
level of mediocrity" which is a necessary characteristic of an epoch of
Capitalist production, which forces all but a very small minority to become mere
machines. Individuality of character is the real child of communal production; it
is the reckless scramble for individual gain which reduces all character to a level
by giving it one object in life, an object sordid in itself, and to which all other
objects and aspirations, however noble, must bend and be subsidiary.

E. A new system of industrial production
must necessarily bear with it its own morality. Morality, which in a due state of
Society should mean nothing more than the responsibility of the individual man to
the social whole of which he forms a part, has come to mean his responsibility to a
supernatural being who arbitrarily creates and directs his conscience and the laws
which are to govern it; although the attributes of this being are but the reflex of
some passing phase of man's existence, and change more or less with that phase. A
purely theological morality, therefore, means simply a survival from a past
condition of Society; it may be added that, however sacred it may be deemed
conventionally, it is set aside with little scruple when it clashes with the
necessities (unforeseen at its birth) which belong to the then existing state of
things.

The economical change which we advocate, therefore, would not be stable unless
accompanied by a corresponding revolution in ethics, which, however, is certain to
accompany it, since the two things are inseparable elements of one whole, to wit
social evolution.

F. Under a Socialistic system contracts
between individuals would be voluntary and unenforced by the community. This would
apply to the marriage contract as well as others, and it would become a matter of
simple inclination. Women also would share in the certainty of livelihood which
would be the lot of all; and children would be treated from their birth as members
of the community entitled to share in all its advantages; so that economical
compulsion could be no more brought to bear on the contract than legal compulsion
could be. Nor would a truly enlightened public opinion, freed from mere theological
views as to chastity, insist on its permanently binding nature in the face of any
discomfort or suffering that might come of it.

G. The first discoverable stage of human
society was founded on a Communistic basis. Religious, ethical, political,
economic, artistic activities were not developed into separate existence, but were
merely latent. Civilisation, which at bottom meant the development of the great
antagonism between individualism and Society, in the course of its evolution
brought these distinctions in the several departments of human life into relief at
the cost of all the miseries which that antagonism necessarily produced. Historical
progress (i.e. the Historical Period of human evolution) simply means the
disentanglement of these various departments with the antagonisms involved in them;
"Happy," says the proverb, "is the people which has no history." Socialism closes
[this[ era of antagonisms, and, whatever may be the case as time goes on, and
though we cannot accept finality, at present we can see nothing beyond it.

H. The so-called co-operative bodies,
whatever might be their arrangements within themselves, would, as far as their
external dealings were concerned, have to act as bodies just like other
capitalists; also their individual members outside their own bodies would be each
of them a capitalist. It is to be understood that this is said of the Co-operative
societies if they came up to their own standard, and divided all their profits
equitably among their workers; but we believe none of them reaches this standard,
and most of those existing are mere joint-stock companies worked on improved
business principles.

I. Now that the feudal system with the
consequent public duties of the landowner is abolished, land is but one of
the forms of capital. The land that a factory stands upon is part of the constant
capital of the manufacturer, just as much as the building is, or the machinery
within it. A landowner's rent for his land is exactly analogous to a money-lender's
interest on his money; it is one of the many forms of squeezing surplus value from
labour.

J. By political power we do not mean the
exercise of the franchise, or even the fullest development of the representative
system, but the direct control by the people of the whole administration of the
community, whatever the ultimate destiny of that administration is to be. We
venture to suggest that the first step in the state of transition into Communism
might probably be the enactment of a law of a minimum of wages and a maximum of
price applied to all industrial production, including the distribution of goods; it
seems to us that this, coupled with the immediate abolition of all laws enforcing
contract, would at once destroy the possibility of profit-making, and would give us
opportunity for getting into working order the decentralised voluntary organisation
of production which we hope to see take the place of the present Hierarchy of
Compulsion.